Songbird
by Masquerading as Quality
Summary: After nearly sixteen years of tireless searching, Maleficent stumbles upon the very target of her ire, alone and unguarded, singing in the forest. The events that follow are not precisely according to plan. [AU, Prompt response, will be femmeslash.]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This is a response to several requests for a Maleficent/Aurora story where they meet before the onset of the sleeping curse. The first chapter is fairly short as far as my stories go, and I'm not sure how long the whole story will be yet—knowing me, it could get long-winded pretty quickly. I would really appreciate your feedback, and I hope you enjoy!

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Maleficent had never devoted very much thought to music.

She had always been naturally gifted in most of her pursuits. She'd easily learned to sing a few folk tunes in her earliest youth, easily learned to play the occasional instrument she came across in her travels, and hadn't even the faintest doubt that she retained this knowledge, although she'd encountered little more than idle raven song in the past several decades.

But did she care? The folk tunes and the instruments meant nothing to her. They were diversions, ways to pass the time on those rare occasions when time seemed infinite and not of the essence. Maleficent valued knowledge and skill, certainly, and above all else, but apart from the satisfaction she gleaned from her easy expertise in the realm of music, she had always felt that she would be much the same without the knowledge.

That is to say, she had always felt thusly before this moment.

Few things had ever given Maleficent pause. She had an uncommonly agile mind, and she seldom had any trouble attending to multiple matters at once, while still maintaining the requisite remainder of brain power for unanticipated developments, unlikely though they were. Maleficent anticipated almost everything.

Not an instant after she had stopped dead in her tracks, Maleficent was overcome by a surge of irritation at herself. How imbecilic. A human girl singing in the forest was enough to surprise her? Peasants sang frequently, though seldom quite as well or as sweetly, and simple-minded mortals were moved to song by something so commonplace as a pleasant afternoon. What was a lovely voice to Maleficent? She had a most pressing matter to attend to, and she had just recently been informed that the minions to whom she had previously assigned the task were wholly incompetent.

Loath though she was to admit weakness in any fashion, even in the confines of her own mind, Maleficent had never been particularly good at locating people. Magical proclivities showed themselves in curious ways, but this one was straightforward: she'd never had any interest. As far as she was concerned, people could come and go as they pleased, so long as they did not stand in her way.

When news of the missing princess had reached Maleficent's ears, she'd at first been mildly amused by such a feeble attempt to thwart her will, but her idle mockery had soon turned to maddening frustration. Maleficent was among the most powerful fairies of her generation, and yet she could not locate a defenseless human child? She would not stand for it.

It was only upon sight that Maleficent was overcome by a deep and profound irritation with herself. Her years of sleep deprivation had at last begun to addle her mind. Not until she saw the girl—golden hair, flawless skin, bright red lips, so clearly the daughter of the Queen who had bargained so dearly for her—did Maleficent realize that of course no peasant, nor any mortal, sang with so lovely a voice. That voice had been gifted to her by a fairy at her christening.

The three good fairies had hidden the Princess Aurora here.

Right under Maleficent's nose.

Irritation quickly swelled into rage. Maleficent's vision blurred and her hands began to shake. She had no time to enjoy the fact that she had at last located the missing princess, for her mind had already moved onto the next matter at hand: how to make them pay.

Maleficent had scoured the entire Earth and several planets besides looking for this girl. She had called upon every ally she had ever made, every creature she could will to do her bidding without any chance of beginning a nasty rumour that she was experiencing any difficulty with her task.

She had sent her idiot minions into the surrounding towns and forests every few years, but she had never personally searched them. She had honestly believed that the three Good Fairies who served as the Kings counselors were not quite stupid or reckless enough to hide such a precious commodity in plain sight.

Clearly, she had done something she'd believed impossible. She had overestimated the competence of the Good Fairies.

Maleficent's knuckles whitened around her staff, and she made to charge into the clearing where the princess wandered. She would drag the girl back to wherever the fairies were keeping her and eviscerate her in front of them. She would send the remains to the King and Queen in a box with a ribbon. _Good game!_ she would say. _I'll bet you thought for a moment that you stood a chance against me! Well. Here's your precious_—

The princess's singing was broken off by a musical sigh. She collapsed gracefully into the grass by a stream and reached out with a tiny, delicate hand to stroke the head of a rabbit at her side. It did not run or shy away. Indeed, it moved nearer to her when she spoke. "Have you ever been outside this little clearing?" she wondered.

Something in Maleficent's chest started ever so slightly, and she frowned instinctively in response. There was no way the girl could have sensed her presence. No. She was speaking to the rabbit. Of course.

Aurora dipped her bare foot, just as small and delicate as her hand, into the water. "It's all right," she told the rabbit. "Neither have I, and yet..." Another sigh. Wistful. Beautiful. "I can't help but wonder if the rest of the world is as dangerous as my aunties tell me."

So. The Good Fairies kept her in this minuscule corner of the woods and told her the rest of the world was dangerous. Their plan grew more idiotic by the minute. If Maleficent's mother had tried to feed that nonsense to her or her sisters when they were teenagers, she'd be sure to have three runaways on her hands before nightfall.

"I know they only mean to protect me," she continued. Her melodious voice grew heavy with melancholy, and Maleficent's frown deepened. "But they can't very well do that forever, can they? Why, in a few months' time I'll be sixteen years old! They're going to expect me to act like a grown-up, take on more responsibilities... But will they still insist that I don't speak to anyone then? How am I ever to grow up if I've never even met another person? How am I ever to..."

Another sigh. A sad, self-deprecating giggle. "Can't even talk to you anymore without hearing Aunt Flora's voice in my head. 'Don't you have better things to worry about than falling in love?'"

Aurora withdrew her feet from the stream, stood, and continued her walk. Her small band of animal companions scurried after her, hanging on her every word. Not a few steps away, Maleficent stood immobile in the shadows, doing exactly the same thing.

"But you know something?" Aurora's voice suddenly took on a lighter quality, almost playful, but with an underlying spark that rendered it less childish, less flippant. "I don't think there's anything more important than love," she told the forest.

So young. So naive. She said this with a kind of glowing, fiery certainty. There was nothing this poor, simple child believed in more strongly than the power of _love_. Maleficent scoffed.

Aurora stopped walking. "Hello? Is somebody there?"

Maleficent's fight-or-flight response had always erred rather decidedly on the side of fighting. Though a very small part of her felt compelled to leave immediately and sequester herself as far away from this situation as possible until she could work out why exactly she'd spent the past ten minutes quietly listening in on an idiot juvenile's ramblings on the matter of love when she ought to be ripping her to pieces, Maleficent would sooner die than live with the knowledge that she had fled from just such a creature.

"High praise for something so volatile, so fleeting," said Maleficent quietly. She did not move from her spot, nor did she allow her voice to sound precisely where it was. She had waited this long to find the girl. She wanted to watch her prey squirm a bit longer.

Aurora did not disappoint. She turned in frantic circles like a frightened doe, golden hair whipping violently over her shoulders, bright violet-blue eyes darting wildly between the trees, looking for any sign of something amiss. "Something so volatile? How do you mean—?"

But as quickly as she had been thrown into a frenzy, Aurora stopped and her lovely features contorted into a frown that was far more melancholy than threatening. "Nevermind. I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to speak to strangers." She turned her back to Maleficent and made to leave the clearing.

Maleficent was seized by the bizarre desire to continue the conversation, without revealing herself and without capturing and killing the princess. Why in Hell's name would she want to do that? Just for a bit of fun? Hadn't this gone on long enough? "How shall you ever meet anyone new, if you never speak to a stranger?"

Aurora stopped. She stood still and silent for a moment before she responded, quietly. "I imagine the idea is that I can't."

"Why do you suppose that is?"

"Well, I..." Aurora sighed. "I don't know."

The melancholy had returned to her voice ten times over. Though Maleficent knew the sound of it was only a trick of simple fairy magic, this knowledge did nothing to silence the effect the girl's voice had on her. Aurora was unhappy, and it made Maleficent feel sad to hear her sadness. This, like most emotions, quickly turned into undirected irritation, and again, Maleficent frowned at nothing.

"You'll have a difficult time chasing your dreams of love if you continue to live in a world of strangers," said Maleficent coolly.

Aurora said nothing for a moment, and then her little shoulders convulsed slightly. After another long silence, she let out a small, pathetic sob. Maleficent's lip curled instinctively in response to the sound.

"Please," said Aurora tremulously. "I know that already. You don't have to be so unkind."

"Run home to your beloved caretakers, then," Maleficent sneered. "Hide your head in your dreams while you may."

Aurora turned around abruptly. Tears sparkled in her searching eyes and her rose-red lips trembled ever so slightly. She focused her attention on a spot not far away from where Maleficent stood. Her near-accuracy was more unnerving than it should have been. Maleficent must simply have grown too irritated to continue throwing her voice about.

"I am sorry that the world has been cruel to you," she said.

Maleficent wasn't certain what she had expected, but she had not anticipated this. "I beg your pardon?"

"Perhaps you've never known the kind of love I know," she continued. "I'm sorry for that. But you see..." A small smile began to tug at her lips, almost imperceptible, but just as warm and as genuine as the inflection it engendered in her voice. "You are the first person I've ever spoken to. Besides my aunts, of course. And for that, I shall always love you just a little bit, whoever you are. Even if you weren't very nice to me."

She turned to leave again, and Maleficent was far too stunned to stop her. Before her golden curls disappeared amongst the trees, Aurora stopped and turned around once more.

"I suppose that means I've proven you all wrong, doesn't it?" she wondered lightly.

Not an instant later, she was well and truly gone.

Maleficent could follow her. She could enact her plan this very evening and be done with the whole matter. She could get a full night of rest for the first time in nearly two decades, and she could leave this land for a time, find some other place to cause trouble, where the trouble didn't bite back in such frustrating ways.

This brief interaction had left Maleficent feeling confused. She didn't like to feel confused. She had minimal experience with the sensation. Generally, her motives clearly aligned with one another. Her wishes followed logically, and they certainly did not contradict one another.

No. She wouldn't kill the girl tonight. Not without a plan and a contingency or two. She wouldn't throw caution to the wind simply because she'd been caught off-guard. That would indicate that she had been caught off-guard, and she would not concede to something so preposterous. She knew where the girl was now. She had a few months to concoct a death sentence even more horrific and poetic than her first.

Somewhere in the distance, Aurora began to sing again. Impossibly, her song was warmer and sweeter than it had been the first time Maleficent had heard it.

Nonsense! An imbecilic magic trick!

Maleficent scowled and departed the forest in a burst of green flame. She could not endure this torment a moment longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** This was written very quickly after I saw the new Maleficent movie, which may explain to some of you why it's a little bit of a love letter to the three good fairies. I think I'll keep the chapters short for as long as they feel like staying that way. Thank you so much for your feedback! I hope you will continue to share your thoughts!

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Briar Rose reached the little cottage she called home in a sort of daze. She sang and hummed intermittently, depending upon whether her mouth was occupied with a handful of the berries her aunts had sent her out to pick. They'd chide her for eating them, but there was no real harm in it. There were always plenty of berries to be found in these woods, and Briar Rose seldom lost her appetite.

Rose rather wished she would stop growing soon. She was becoming awfully tall in comparison to her aunts, and though she'd of course never set eyes upon another person (except through a crack in her window upstairs) she didn't particularly relish the thought of towering over every single person she met once she was allowed to meet new people.

Well, provided she ever was.

"Oh, there you are, Rosie!"

Aunt Fauna was hunched awkwardly over a washboard and bucket, scrubbing away at one of her green dresses. None of them had many clothes, for they were all dreadfully inept at sewing. They were dreadfully inept at all of the housework, really, which was why Aurora did the better part of it, but for some reason, none of them would allow Aurora to even so much as look at a needle and thread. You might hurt yourself, each of them maintained, with a curious glint of something Rose didn't recognize in their eyes.

Briar Rose was inclined to argue that she might far more easily hurt herself cooking or mending the roof or climbing trees in the forest, but she didn't particularly want to be forbidden from any of those things, so she very quickly learned to hold her tongue on the matter.

"Hello, Auntie," Rose replied, but her voice was still dreamy, for her mind was still elsewhere. "Would you like any help?"

"Oh, don't you worry about me, Rosie," Fauna chuckled. "You just hurry on inside before Flora gets all upset."

"Upset?" This was almost—but not quite—enough to bring Rose back to the present moment. "Have I been gone a long time?"

"Well, it is nearly sunset, dear," said Fauna. "You know Flora doesn't...that is, _we_ don't like you to be alone so close to nightfall."

Rose looked up through the trees to the deep blue sky, and a hazy little smile began to tug at her lips. She hadn't even noticed how long she'd wandered about. She'd been wondering about so many things...

"Of course, Auntie," she said to the sky. "I'm sorry I was late."

"Never you mind, dearie," said Fauna, the warmth of her smile clear in her voice. "Inside with you."

Rose entered the cottage cradling her basket in her arms, in the midst of a lovely waltz melody she'd been playing around with.

"Well! Look who decided to make her way home!"

"I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Flora!" said Rose. She finished her dance with a twirl, set the basket on the kitchen counter, and gave her aunt a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I lost track of the time, that's all."

"Lost track of the time!" Flora echoed, but the bite had already left her tone. "Lost track of the time while some of us were counting the minutes until sunset, worried sick!"

Rose giggled. Her jovial mood would not be so easily dampened. "Worried sick? I made it home long before sunset, Auntie! No need to worry."

Slowly and seamlessly, Rose set about taking over each of Flora's rapidly failing dinner projects. She did wonder how her aunts never seemed to improve at cooking or cleaning or what-have-you in the slightest, but it didn't really matter. She didn't mind doing the work. She loved her aunts dearly, and she hadn't the slightest idea how they'd gotten by before she'd been old enough to help out. She was happy to make their lives easier. When she'd taken care of the housework, they relaxed, and when they relaxed, they were really delightful, all three of them.

"Flora, I swear, if you've hidden my favourite slippers again—" Aunt Merryweather's voice preceded her down the stairs.

"Why in Heaven's name would I hide your slippers?" Flora wondered with a long-suffering sigh.

"You don't want me to have any joy in my life, that's why!" Merryweather responded easily.

"Don't want you to—Merryweather, that is ridiculous! Did you check—"

"Did I check!" Merryweather took the last few steps with a leap, that she might accost her older sister more immediately. "I've checked everywhere! Perhaps you'd like to tell me what clever place I haven't checked, hmm?"

Rose tuned them out for a few moments while she set the table and began humming to herself again. Perhaps someday she'd be allowed to meet someone. And then perhaps she could invite that someone over for dinner. How lovely it would be to set another place at the table, right next to the placve where Rose sat, so that she might ask her new friend all sorts of questions, and be the first to hear the answers!

"—check under your own bed, you ninny?"

"Of _course_ I ch—oooh!"

Rose's pleasant turn of thought was interrupted by Merryweather's stormy exit, complete with slamming door.

"Honestly. Her slippers are blue, and they reek of her feet! What could I possibly want with those hideous things?"

"I haven't any idea, Auntie," Rose replied absently. As she arranged the food on the first plate, she imagined, just for a moment, that she was making a plate for the owner of the mysterious voice, who'd spoken to her in the woods today.

As Flora continued her nightly rant on the virtues of attractive footwear, Rose dared to imagine what the owner of that voice might look like. She thought she'd caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure amongst the trees, but she couldn't tell anything in particular. Perhaps she'd seen a glow...the glow of eyes? But eyes didn't glow. Then again, if those were the stranger's eyes, she must be very tall, indeed. Perhaps Rose needn't feel so self-conscious about towering over everyone she met. Perhaps she was not uncommonly tall, but her aunts were uncommonly small! How odd that would be!

Rose remained distracted all throughout dinner. Flora and Merryweather hadn't nearly finished bickering about the proper colour of slippers, and Rose felt rather badly for leaving Aunt Fauna with nothing to do but sigh sadly and attempt in vain to make peace between them, but she could not stop herself from wondering what a dinner conversation with her mysterious stranger might be like.

The stranger wasn't very nice to her. Perhaps the stranger also had a sister with whom she liked to bicker about trivial matters. Or perhaps the stranger was a bit crueler, and often bickered about less trivial matters, like whether a young woman in the woods might ever be allowed to make a friend.

"Rose? Are you all right?" Merryweather patted Rose's hand, and Rose jumped in surprise.

"Hm? Yes. Yes, of course. A bit tired, that's all." Of course that wasn't even nearly all. Rose felt her stomach twist uncomfortably as she remembered the way her conversation with the mysterious voice had gone, the way she'd been a bit afraid to challenge the stranger, the way she'd known the stranger was right, however cruel.

"Maybe you'd better get ready for bed, Rosie," said Merryweather. "Don't you worry about the dishes; we'll manage."

Rose nodded silently and went upstairs to her room. She washed her face and changed into her nightgown, and just as she had settled into her bed, there came a knock upon her door.

"Come in," said Rose.

Her aunts entered and surrounded her bed, and they all set about tucking the blankets snugly about her shoulders.

"Good night, my little princess," said Flora, and kissed Rose's forehead.

"Good night, Aunt Flora."

"Good night, Rosie," said Fauna, and kissed Rose's right cheek.

"Good night, Aunt Fauna."

"Good night, sweet princess," said Merryweather, and kissed Rose's left cheek.

"Good night, Aunt Merryweather."

Each of them reached out to smoothe Rose's hair, and then with a few final good nights, they left her to sleep.

Rose turned onto her side and gazed out her little window into the night sky. She'd always liked her room up in the attic. She liked that she could see the sky above the trees through her window, and she liked that she was closer to the clouds. It felt somehow like a kind of quiet freedom.

Quite suddenly, Rose knew she was very lucky to be so surrounded by love. She had never really thought about it very much until she'd spoken to the stranger today. In the stranger's words, she'd heard an utter dearth of it. The stranger seemed somehow to scoff at love, to challenge its very existence. And in that moment, Rose had realized that this figureless voice had no aunties waiting for her to come home, waiting to eat dinner with her and fuss over her and tuck her in and kiss her goodnight.

Perhaps she had been thoughtless just as the stranger's ceaseless questions suggested, dreaming of finding a new love, full of excitement, when she already had a life which, while not quite perfect, certainly overflowed with love. Perhaps the stranger's cruel words had been not a challenge, but an admonishment.

Perhaps Briar Rose was a selfish fool for wanting anything more than this.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Look at me not taking a million years to update! Thank you so much for your kind words and your enthusiasm! I hope that you continue to enjoy and to share your thoughts!

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It could be argued that Maleficent's state of neutrality was the common man's state of agitation. She'd been an anxious child, and the trials she had faced throughout her youth had twisted her anxiety into a very focused and productive sort of paranoia. She feared nothing, but only because she anticipated nearly everything.

Given her tempestuous nature and formidable power, Maleficent considered herself to be exceedingly reasonable. So long as the inferior beings she permitted to run amok at her feet regarded her with the requisite fearful deference, she was contented not to plague their lives with misery.

However, if there was one thing Maleficent would not abide, it was foolhardy insolence.

It defied the laws of natural selection, really. A human was a fragile and fleeting creature, and any human with a working survival instinct ought to realize that he was no match for his fairy neighbour. Should he see fit to make some imbecilic statement of power by not inviting her to a politically charged social event, he ought to be stricken back down into his proper place before he brought harm upon more than just himself.

And should his offspring see fit to blithely toss her hair in the general direction of what Maleficent well knew to be a most foreboding shadow amongst the trees, well, then, that foolish little human ought to be made fully aware of the absolute idiocy of her own demeanour before the intended vengeance upon her father could be enacted.

Maleficent had never experienced betrayal, for she had never trusted anyone. The dark fae were not well-known for honouring familial ties; even Maleficent's own mother and sisters had been her enemies in the neverending battle for survival. She'd kept a handful of friends over the course of her life, but she'd lost touch with all of them over the past two decades, so consumed was she with the search for the human princess. She enjoyed their company from time to time, but she did not trust them, and she assumed they were wise enough not to trust her. Everyone in Maleficent's world looked out for her own interests above all else.

But the human world was different. People trusted one another—frightfully easily, as far as Maleficent was concerned—and the sting of betrayal was considered a devastating blow. Humans learned to be wary not by virtue of simple awareness of the world, but through the experience of betrayal.

Therefore, Maleficent reasoned, this must be how she dealt with the Princess Aurora.

She had come to this conclusion fairly quickly. After she'd parted ways with the princess, she'd returned to her home in the Forbidden Mountains in a state of agitation, which was arguably the common man's frenzied rage. Her raven companion, Diablo, had avoided her until she'd calmed herself and settled upon her throne to plot her next move, and had gladly lit upon her shoulder moments later when the idea of betrayal had occurred to her.

"How do you suppose one engenders trust, pet?" she wondered idly. Diablo's unhelpful response was to nudge her hand. Her lip curled into a sneer, but she gave his head an affectionate pat nonetheless. "Well, it seems you trust me well enough not to wring your neck. Perhaps a pat on her feathered head will be quite enough."

And the more Maleficent considered this offhand statement, the more she realized it might be perfectly accurate. Maleficent wasn't unaware of social graces—she merely elected not to make use of them in her day to day affairs—and she wasn't without a certain variety of charm. Despite these truths, Maleficent had made no effort whatsoever to be pleasant or charming, and the girl had responded, overall, positively to her.

The good fairies didn't allow Aurora to speak to anyone. Had Maleficent only those three blundering biddies for company, she would go utterly mad within the hour. Even despite her frightfully accommodating disposition, Aurora clearly longed desperately for the company she was denied. As far as Maleficent was concerned, she could be far less interesting and remain infinitely preferable to Mistresses Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather.

Why, in all likelihood, she could make the girl believe she was her friend without any effort whatsoever, aside from her mere presence and the (decidedly admirable) quality of not being one of her caretakers.

Maleficent did not sleep that night. She sat atop her throne, practically shaking with anticipation, until the moon disappeared from the sky, and the sun rose and then began to set in the afternoon. Then, without another word to Diablo or the various creatures who scuttled about at her feet asking for directions, Maleficent disappeared in a burst of green flame and reappeared in the part of the forest where she'd first discovered the hidden princess.

Even before she had fully materialized, Maleficent could hear the princess's lovely voice raised in song, fuller and sweeter and more virtuosic than it had been the day before. What a useless magical gift.

Useless, but undeniably captivating.

Maleficent quickly located the flash of sunshine gold which was Aurora's hair amid the darker colours of the forest. Today, Aurora had filled her basket with flowers, but at the moment, her basket served as her dance partner. She swung it about—spilling the occasional bloom as she went—in a graceful and surprisingly precise waltz. Her bare feet moved with polished certainty, as though she'd been trained all her life, and yet Maleficent could not imagine that those three clumsy fools possessed enough natural grace to teach her thusly, even if they tried.

Most likely Aurora's natural grace was another trick of fairy magic. Maleficent narrowly avoided scoffing aloud (for she did not wish to alert the princess to her presence just yet). A colossal waste of magical power was this pretty maid in peasant's clothes.

"I do wonder what it must be like to dance with another person," said Aurora.

Maleficent did not start this time. She knew Aurora was speaking to the animals who gathered in the trees around her. They chattered back to her, each in their unique language, and Maleficent wondered if Aurora understood them, or if she merely pretended to. Perhaps she was even more desperate for companionship than Maleficent realized.

"I've only seen pictures, you know." She fell gracefully down into the grass and leaned her head against the tree where her animal companions perched. They accommodated her by scurrying down to sit at her side. "A handsome young man bows and offers his hand to a lady in a long, flowing ballgown—" she smoothed the plain and somewhat tattered skirt of her own frock "—and she twirls about the room in his arms..."

Aurora sighed and closed her eyes.

"But of course I don't even know if I'm doing the steps properly. I imagine I'd be frightfully clumsy, and no one would wish to dance with me at all."

Though Maleficent was prepared for the melancholy in Aurora's voice, it affected her own heart all the same. Loathsome fairy trickery. Useless. "Gentlemen seldom choose their partners based upon skill," said Maleficent, and she took a moment to relish the way Aurora jumped to her feet in surprise. "At least," she continued smugly, "not secondary to aesthetic appeal."

"You frightened me." Aurora steadied herself and swallowed audibly.

"You have the good fortune to be in possession of both," Maleficent continued.

"Both?" Aurora echoed with a small frown.

"I expect you'd have no trouble securing a dance partner, were you permitted to attend an event which necessitated dancing."

Aurora stopped in her tracks and turned around. She was almost directly facing Maleficent now. "You're being much nicer than you were yesterday," she remarked cautiously.

Maleficent felt herself smiling, though she wasn't entirely certain why. She'd known her plan would go off without a hitch; else she wouldn't have put it into action so quickly. Why smile? "Perhaps my objective observation is simply more to your liking today than it was yesterday."

Aurora's frown deepened. "I shouldn't talk to you anymore."

Maleficent narrowly suppressed a chuckle. "Whyever not?"

"I told you already," the girl replied as she turned to retrieve her basket of flowers. "I'm not allowed to speak to strangers."

"I'm not a stranger if we've met once before, now, am I?"

Aurora paused, one hand upon her basket. "Well..." She bit her lip as she considered this. "I suppose not," she decided at last, and instantly, her demeanour cheered significantly. "Does that mean I may ask your name? Or what you look like? I have been wondering quite a bit...I mean...I hope you don't think me odd, but I did mention I've never met anyone before, and..."

Maleficent could no longer contain her amusement. She let out a soft chuckle, and as soon as the sound reached Aurora's ears, she trailed off and her expression fell. "I'm sorry," she said.

This would be almost too easy. "Are you certain you possess the constitution, little princess?" Maleficent wondered lightly. "Grown men have quivered in terror at the mere mention of my name, dropped to their knees and begged for mercy at the sight of me."

At the very least, this caught Aurora's attention, but she did not seem wholly convinced. "Truly?" she asked quietly. Rather quickly, though, she added, "But how shall I know unless I see you for myself?"

Maleficent tilted her head studiously for a moment while she considered the curious creature who had grown from the infant she had cursed. For an instant, she had very nearly forgotten that they were one and the same. "A fair point," she conceded, and emerged from her protective cover of trees.

The look that slowly dawned upon Aurora's face held not even the slightest trace of fear or revulsion, and Maleficent found this decidedly unnerving. The girl was overcome by pure wonder and curiosity, and ostensibly no negative emotions of any sort. Was she capable of them? Had she simply been so thoroughly sheltered that she hadn't the most basic good sense to be wary of someone who looked the way Maleficent did—equal parts naturally and deliberately imposing?

"You're very tall."

Maleficent's brow twitched. "I beg your pardon?"

Aurora tilted her head slightly. "It's a bit of a relief. I was beginning to worry that I might tower over everyone I ever met."

"Presuming you were permitted to meet anyone."

Aurora averted her eyes. "Well. Yes."

Maleficent seldom thought very much about being tall, or about any specific aspect of her physical appearance. It served her well in life to be tall. Now that she thought about it, she'd never met anyone taller, and she doubted she'd like it very much if she did. "I assure you I've led a fulfilling life under just such a circumstance," she responded with a subtle smirk.

"Oh!" Aurora looked up, vibrant violet-blue eyes shining with the beginnings of dismay. "I'm terribly sorry, really. I didn't mean anything by it."

This only served to further Maleficent's amusement. "Is there something you find particularly desirable about not being taller than someone?"

Some unreadable emotion flashed across the girl's eyes, and inexplicably, she gave Maleficent a quick, nervous once-over. "It's silly."

"I'm certain I concur," Maleficent replied lightly. "However, I should like to hear your line of reasoning, nonetheless."

Aurora began to fidget with her dress. "Oh, you know...in the books my aunties have, there's always a..." she averted her eyes once more, and a small smile graced her lovely features, "well, a handsome prince, or a knight, or the like. And in the pictures, he always towers over the lady, his love, and I feared..."

Maleficent bit the inside of her mouth to keep from chuckling. "You feared all of the handsome princes and knights of the world were the height of your...aunts?"

"Something like that..."

Suddenly, Aurora set her eyes upon Maleficent once more, and Maleficent found to her immense distaste that the full force of those lovely eyes upon her was just as much a shock to her system as was the uselessly lovely sound of the girl's singing voice. Maleficent frowned instinctively.

"What do you know about my aunts?" Aurora wondered. "What do you know about me, for that matter?"

Maleficent took a moment to consider her response. "More than the extent of our interaction might suggest," she said at last.

Aurora's brow furrowed slightly. "That's rather unfair, don't you think?"

This proved to be the end of Maleficent's determination not to show her amusement. She had a hearty, chuckle. "If you expect life to be fair, little princess, you shall be sorely disappointed."

Aurora considered this for a moment. Her expression remained decidedly concerned. "Why do you call me little princess?"

Maleficent raised one eyebrow. "Why wouldn't I?"

"That's what my aunties call me." Aurora began to back away. "Have you been spying on us?"

There was something strange about Aurora's reaction. It would make sense for her to be concerned that Maleficent might be aware that she was a princess in disguise, but her wording didn't quite match with that. "I haven't," she replied slowly. "I merely thought the sobriquet suited you. What would you have me call you, instead?"

Wide, searching violet-blue eyes studied her intently for several long seconds before Aurora replied, "You could call me by my name."

Maleficent met her gaze steadily, but against her will, she felt a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "And what might that be, milady?"

Aurora's rose red lips parted, and just as she inhaled to speak, three unbearably familiar voices rang out through the trees, unwittingly giving Maleficent the answer to more than just the question at hand.

"Rose!"

"Briar Rose!"

"Rosie, dear!"

Aurora jumped and glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the sound. "I'd better go," she said as she collected her basket of flowers. As she scurried about the clearing, it came to Maleficent's attention once again that her feet were bare.

Just before she disappeared into the trees, Aurora stopped and whirled around to face Maleficent, who had not moved.

"Will I see you again?" she asked.

The undeniable lilt of hopefulness engendered a surprising and most unwelcome tightness in Maleficent's throat, and she endeavoured to make her expression even more severe to compensate. "Perhaps," she replied, and lifted her chin slightly.

Aurora's lovely face broke out into the loveliest smile Maleficent had ever seen, and one of very few smiles which had ever been directed at her. The sensation was overall something like severe nausea.

Aurora opened her mouth once more to say something, but Maleficent did not wait to hear it. She threw her arms above her head and disappeared in a burst of green fire. Even after she'd rematerialized in the ballroom of her home, although she knew it was utterly impossible to hear anything in the distant forest from the mountains, Maleficent still imagined she could hear the girl singing.

"Useless," she muttered to no one in particular.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** I know this isn't the update most people are waiting on, but after my summer almost-complete-hiatus from writing, I need to break myself back in slowly! Fortunately, I'm almost done with the next chapter of this, as well, so it should be along shortly. Thank you so much for your patience!

* * *

Briar Rose despised reading.

It occurred to her that, if asked—if anyone ever thought to ask, and if there were anyone to think of such a thing—she would say that she didn't despise anything. But she would be wholly incorrect. She despised reading. She despised books and paper and words and letters and whatever cruel, twisted soul had chosen to concoct the written language.

Of course, she never thought to despise reading when it had no direct impact upon her daily life. It was only in this moment, or more precisely, this interminable span of hours, when she would sooner do absolutely anything else, but must sit here and struggle to form thoughts from incoherent scribbles, that Briar Rose could really focus her energies on the pure and formidable hatred of reading.

"Rose, dear."

Rose responded with a dramatic sigh. She'd stopped even pretending to stare at the page, and Fauna had finally taken notice.

She supposed she shouldn't be too sore. She'd been awarded several minutes of respite because Fauna was engaged in her own daunting task—one which fascinated Rose purely because she was not allowed to partake in it: knitting.

"I don't suppose you want to switch?"

"Needles are sharp, Rosie. Wouldn't want you to prick your finger."

Rose rested her head in her hand with another heavy sigh. "So I'll never learn to sew or knit or even crochet?"

Fauna looked up, befuddled. "I think one crochets with a little hook, dearie."

"That wasn't my point at all, Auntie."

Fauna smiled at her, almost sadly, and went back to fumbling with her knitting needles. "Wait until you're older."

"Older!" Rose cried, exasperated. "I'll be sixteen soon. What then?"

Fauna stopped pretending to knit, but her focus remained decidedly downward. "Well. Then I imagine you can learn to knit, if you'd like."

"Then," Rose countered, "you're going to expect me to be a grown-up woman and I'll never have even spoken to another person!"

"Rose!" Fauna looked up, stunned and ever so slightly hurt, and Rose instantly felt very guilty. "We're doing our best to protect you!" she continued, her voice tremulous. "The world—" she gestured wildly towards the window "—it's dangerous out there, Rose! There are people who..." Fauna frowned, swallowed audibly, and abruptly went back to knitting. "People who would mean you ill," she finished quietly.

_Even if that's so_, Rose wanted to argue, _will those mythical evildoers just go away once I've turned sixteen?_

But she felt so profoundly guilty for lying and for starting an argument with her sweet and mild-mannered aunt that she bowed her head and said, "I'm sorry, Aunt Fauna. I know you only want to protect me. I'm only frustrated, that's all."

Fauna's smile returned just as quickly as it had gone. "You'll get better, dearie, if only you practice."

Now it was Rose's turn to frown in confusion. "Practice?"

"Reading, dearie. What else?"

Rose let out a groan and returned to glaring at the incomprehensible book before her. She'd had quite enough with this page. This page was dreadful and she loathed it. She would sooner die than read the words on this page. She flipped the page with an angry flourish only to be confronted by something she'd heretofore never experienced: a picture of a person she recognized.

"Auntie?"

"Yes, dearie?"

"Help me with a word or two?"

Fauna set down her knitting and hurried to Rose's side, but once she set eyes on the page, Rose sensed an immediate and drastic change in Fauna's demeanour. It was as though the entire room had grown darker.

Rose hesitated for an instant, scanned the page, and pointed to the longest word with a capital M.

Fauna swallowed audibly.

"Auntie?"

"Maleficent."

Rose turned to look at her aunt, hoping for more information, but she was greeted with the stoniest silence she'd ever experienced.

"What sort of a word is that?" she wondered.

Fauna turned away from her and walked slowly back to her favourite chair. "It's a name, Rosie. And I'll tell you something about Maleficent. Of course Flora and Merryweather and I can't protect you forever, Rosie, we know that, but _she_..." Fauna turned back to face Rose, and Rose saw to her immense surprise that there were tears in Fauna's eyes. "She is just the sort of person I hope you never have to meet."

Later, Fauna would recount to her sisters with no small degree of confusion that on this blessed day, she had somehow convinced Briar Rose to really commit to learning to read.

Rose, for her part, spent the rest of the afternoon in stunned silence. There was no doubt in her mind that the woman on the page was the woman Rose had met twice now in the woods. And perhaps she had been unpleasant at first, but did that make her the sort of person Rose ought never to encounter? Were decent people always and without exception pleasant? How frustrating it was not to know! If only Rose had encountered even a handful of other people on whom she might base such an opinion!

Rose found it rather jarring to realize that if she'd had this conversation even a few days ago, she would have taken her beloved aunt's opinion as truth without so much as a few questions.

As it stood, however, Rose felt most inclined to protect her mysterious acquaintance from the doubts of her underinformed mind. What did Aunt Fauna know, anyway? When had she encountered this woman, this...Maleficent?

Had she?

_More than the extent of our interaction might suggest_, the Stranger had told her when asked how much she knew of Briar Rose.

But what was there to know, really? Rose led a simple existence. She helped her dear aunties with the housework, she sang to the animals in the forest, and sometimes when she couldn't talk her aunts out of it, she sat at the table and tried and failed to learn to read.

_Maleficent_.

_Fairy_ \- there was another word she recognized. _Magic_. _Forbidden_. _Mountain_. Words she knew, yes, but she could not string them together into anything that made any sense.

Rose blinked twice when another familiar word caught her eye: _evil_.

Could Rose's only friend in the world be evil?

This was the question that kept Rose tossing and turning all night. She never slept well when she wasn't permitted a bit of time out of doors, which was to say, whenever she was forced to pretend to read all through the daylight hours. She could hear the three unique snores of her aunties from downstairs in the dead silence of the night, and the moonlight that illuminated her attic room seemed somehow harsh and frightening.

Good and evil weren't things of which Rose had any real concept. All her life, she'd known only good, and sometimes unpleasant, like a bodily injury or how much she hated to read. What she knew of evil was contained in story books, and all she really knew of those was what Aunt Fauna read to her. Evil people did cruel things. Snow White's mother sent a huntsman to kill her. Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters put her in tattered clothes and made her their slave, took all the joy from her life. The witch Dame Gothel locked Rapunzel away in a tower all her life, and she'd never even met or spoken to another person until...

But wasn't it Dame Gothel, the captor, who was the evil in that story?

Rose thought of her beloved aunts, and she thought of what the word evil meant to her, and she almost laughed from the absurdity of the two concepts together.

Still, as she turned over onto her other side and gazed out her window at the full moon, Briar Rose found that, evil or not, she keenly missed her mysterious friend Maleficent.


End file.
